ECI is closed – signature gathering continues

Stop TTIP applied to carry out an official European Citizens’ Initiative in July 2014. This application was rejected by the European Commission on shaky legal grounds. We’re challenging this decision in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the case is still ongoing. We decided in early October 2014 not to wait for the ECJ but to start a self-organised ECI. We declared to follow the rules of an official ECI as closely as possible. And that’s what we did: We gathered over three million signatures and we managed to reach the country quorum in 23 member states (7 are required). We gathered these signatures during one year precisely; as prescribed by offical EU rules. That’s why the signature gathering for the self-organised ECI closed on 6 October 2015.

Nevertheless we decided to continue the gathering of signatures. TTIP and CETA are not defeated yet and a lot of our supporters demanded we continue with this action. That’s what we’ll do now. However, our signature collection is no longer a self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative and that’s why we decided to change its name. We now call it a European Initiative.

Last but not least: Many thanks to all of you who contributed to the enormous success of the self-organised ECI! Stop TTIP will continue and we promise we will do everything we can to defeat TTIP and CETA.

The ECI result in numbers

Final result: 3,284,289

If we formed a human chain with everybody that signed the ECI, this human chain would be 4895 km long, enough for example to connect Gibraltar with the Arctic circle in the North of Finland or from Cyprus to the most Northern point on the Scottish mainland.

Number of supporting organisations at time of ECI close: 515 from 28 EU Member States

Results in the various EU Member States:

Total

Country quorum*

% of quorum achieved

Signatures still required to reach quorum

AT (Austria)

142.971

13.500

1059,04%

-129.471

BE

64.614

15.750

410,25%

-48.864

BG

34.088

12.750

267,36%

-21.338

CY

1.618

4.500

35,96%

2882

CZ

20.132

15.750

127,82%

-4.382

DE

1.577.042

72.000

2190,34%

-1.505.042

DK

21.066

9.750

216,06%

-11.316

EE

2.901

4.500

64,46%

1.599

ES

90.868

40.500

224,37%

-50.368

FI

37.378

9.750

383,37%

-27.628

FR

360.227

55.500

649,06%

-304.727

GB

501.819

54.750

916,56%

-447.069

GR

44.788

15.750

284,37%

-29.038

HR (Croatia)

10.373

8.250

125,73%

-2.123

HU

20.821

15.750

132,20%

-5.071

IE

17.055

8.250

206,72%

-8.805

IT

72.238

54.750

131,94%

-17.488

LT (Lithuania)

3.133

8.250

37,98%

5.177

LU

10.967

4.500

243,72%

-6.467

LV (Latvia)

1.371

6.000

22,85%

4.629

MT

1.118

4.500

24,84%

3.382

NL

110.144

19.500

564,84%

-90.644

PL

44.282

38.250

115,77%

-6.032

PT

19.927

15.750

126,52%

-4.177

RO

25.130

24.000

104,71%

-1.130

SE (Sweden)

25.984

15.000

173,22%

-10.984

SI (Slovenia)

11.705

6.000

195,08%

-5.705

SK

10.528

9.750

107,98%

-778

3.284.289

* What is a “country quorum”? For an ECI to be successful, a minimum amount of signatures (“country quorum”) has to be gathered in at least seven EU Member States. The EU defines this minimum number of signatures in the ECI rules according to the number of Members a country has in the European Parliament (which is an approximation to the size of its population).